Saturday, August 18, 2007

How Many Deniers Does It Take

...to search Google? Apparently more than two. Tom Harris runs an industry financed Canadian astro-turf group called the NRSP (National Resources Stewardship Program); Bob Carter has been denying stuff since forever. Together they have teamed up at Canada Free Press to write an op-ed that makes an egregious factual error in its very first sentence:

Virtually overnight, Portland (Oregon) High School student Kristen Byrnes has become a climate change sensation and a role model for freethinking young people everywhere.

Actually, and as the front page of her home page quite clearly states, Kristen Byrnes (the tiniest denier) hails from Portland Maine.

Nitpicking? Sure! But if you can't write six words without getting the two coasts of America mixed up, how can anyone take your claims of a "giant conspiracy" seriously?

(Yo Rush Limbaugh, you want to explore this scandal further? I'm available! If Hansen had done something like this you'd be demanding his resignation. )

27 comments:

August 17, 2007Global climate models fail yet another reality checkMarc SheppardOnce again, computer-driven climate simulations have fallen short when measured against real-world scientific observations. That's right -- the very same climate models, on which warming "experts" the likes of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and NASA's GISS base their catastrophic projections, have proven utterly unreliable once more.

In a piece entitled Trouble in Climate-Model Paradise, Sherwood, Keith and Craig Idso, writing in CO2 Science, tell the fascinating story of a recent attempt to harmonize the model / reality relationship that, instead, yielded "embarrassing results" for the researchers.

The mission was to verify an accepted prediction by the esteemed Coupled Model Intercomparison Project and others that for every degree centigrade of surface global warming, precipitation would increase by between 1 and 3%:

"Hence, they decided to see what has happened in the real world in this regard over the last 19 years (1987-2006) of supposedly unprecedented global warming, when data from the Global Historical Climatology Network and satellite measurements of the lower troposphere have indicated a global temperature rise on the order of 0.20°C per decade."

What they found by marrying satellite observations with rain gauge measurements was an actual precipitation increase of 7% per degree C [emphasis added],

"which is somewhere between 2.3 and 7 times larger than what is predicted by state-of-the-art climate models."

Baffled by the sheer magnitude of the inconsistency, researcher F. J. Wentz and company attempted to reconcile it to global wind speed variations. They failed, forcing them to admit that,

"the reason for the discrepancy between the observational data and the GCMs is not clear."

Wentz confessed that the disparity his team discovered between the actions of nature and those of virtual simulations "has enormous impact."

The Doctors Idso agreed, adding:

"And until these ‘enormous impact questions' are settled, we wonder how anyone could conceivably think of acting upon the global energy policy prescriptions of the likes of Al Gore and James Hansen, who speak and write as if there was little more to do in the realm of climate-change prediction than a bit of fine-tuning."

New research from Stephen Schwartz of Brookhaven National Lab concludes that the Earth's climate is only about one-third as sensitive to carbon dioxide as the IPCC assumes. Schwartz's study is "in press" at the Journal of Geophysical Research and you can download a preprint of the study here.

http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf

According to Schwartz's results, which are based on the empirical relationship between trends in surface temperature and ocean heat content, doubling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere would result in a 1.1oC increase in average temperature (0.1 to 2.1oC, two standard deviation uncertainty range). Schwartz's result is 63% lower than the IPCC's estimate of 3oC for a doubling of CO2 (2.0 to 4.5oC, 2SD range).

Right now we're about 41% above the estimated pre-industrial CO2 level of 270 ppm. At the current rate of increase of about 0.55% per year, CO2 will double around 2070. Based on Schwartz's results, we should expect about a 0.6oC additional increase in temperature between now and 2070 due to this additional CO2. That doesn't seem particularly alarming. A couple of other interesting implications of Schwartz's results:

* Aerosols have a relatively small effect on temperature. A doubling of CO2 has an estimated climate "forcing" of 2.7 watts per square centimeter (W/cm2). In contrast, actual aerosol concentrations during the 20th Century had a forcing of -0.3 W/cm2 with a large uncertainty range that could mean either net cooling or net warming from aerosols.

John Pittman: Imagine only having ONE graph. Do a trend line for different periods (whole duration and just a subsection).

Dardie: That's great if the trends would remain the same, but it is certainly common in time series analysis that a short period will have a different slope/trend than a longer one. Trying to compare rural versus urban while making such a change in duration is poor analysis. It's like solving for 3 variables in 2 equations.

...At last the situation came where I did the most enjoying moment of having a sexual relation with another person I laid on the bed he too came beside me I was wearing a sari he was wearing a silky shirt & a lungi, slowly I observed that the doors were open I got up & closed the doors he just kept his hand on the pillow and his head on that he was looking very handsome (he was very handsome) I went beside him, he laid me down. he caught my forehead, my cheeks & kissed on my nose, eyes & mouth slowly his tongue went deeper into me I couldn’t breath it was first time in my life I had such a kiss he was very nice then my husband he removed my sari pullaw & got my blouse worn on my boobs on the top he slowly started kissing on my blouse I got thrilled at that moment & he caught his hand on my stomach it was naked there my sensitive skin couldn’t bear it slowly he started kissing there & he went below my legs which he liked very much it was soft & smooth he up warded my sari & kissed on my thighs his hand reached my panties it started becoming wet there he had a thick mustache which was tickling me very badly slowly he removed my panties also my sari I was now half naked wearing only my blouse...

BCL, what ding dong has been saying about Stephen Schwartz isn't true. Schwartz is actually saying the effect of CO2 on warming could be even worse, but are being masked by aerosol sprays. He further states it is inconclusive at this point.

sorry, the aerosol one is his earlier work - 2004. The 2007 paper referenced doesn't overturn his earlier theories, but again, it has been misrepresented in the article DDKG quotes. Still going over the 2007 science paper, more later.

Thanks for the alert to the high school student's correct state - we have asked the newspaper to correct it and they did. Very important, of course.

You have no idea of the identities of the many citizens who are generous enough to fund us because our funding has always remained entirely confidential, just like many non-profits (Greenpeace, Sierra Club, National Citizen's Coalition, ...). You, like many of our opponents who hope people don't listen to us, just make up what you think will sound nefarious. I guess yo must REALLY hate the David Suzuki Foundation as they are funded by many of Canada's largest corporations, including oil and gas companies - check their annual report.